Our team is celebrating its 10 year existence on September 25 (2009) and because there wouldn't be us without SETI@HOME we are doing something more than just crunch...

We do a donation challenge!

We are now at € 215,- (about $ 300,-) and hope to make it a nice large figure for the cause :D

(more info at www.seti.nl)

And this is not all...
Our stats system has improved greatly in the last year.. and we (I) think that we can provide the stats for a real Gauntlet.. We will have to invest quite a bit of time in creating a good system to create it all.. so at this point we'd like to know if more (sub)teams/people are interested in participating..

The donation challenge will end on September 25, and we are planning/hoping to start the Gauntlet on that day.

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

For information, questions and/or application you can also visit our forum

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

Eesger,
I posted about setting up a gauntlet several months ago on your S@NL forum, but at the time we had nobody to do stats. I asked several people but no luck, so it just fizzled out.

Just recently, one of the guys on our team, BrunoTheQuestionable, started working on a special competition script for the purpose of holding competitions on SETI@home or the script could be used on other BOINC projects too. Bruno has this script at a reasonably advanced stage of development, but its not finished yet, it still needs more work. We have started our first competition test run with the new script and today Bruno produced his first stats graph from the script. Its looking good so far.

What is your current position with your stats script? Do you have someone who can do a script to handle a few hundred users?

I make you the offer, if you want to be patient with us we might be able to get this script developed and working within a few days or weeks.

John.
www.paddysinspace.com
.

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I've been working for about a year now on our stats.. (take a look ;) It contains all SETI@HOME users, so the amount of data shouldn't be the problem (if it can handle all the users, it should be able to handle a portion ;)

I've made it pretty modular, which (should :D) make it not to complex to create a subteam structure based upon the current team-structure.

One of the only things that do not run smoothly is the history generation of the user table, which is quite large. This somehow always hangs half way into the process :(.. but there is also a status-system, so the history sync script figures out where it got stuck and continues. Other team members are now busy building a new server (more CPU power, newer LAMP versions) Which should solve that.

But, if BrunoTheQuestionable is almost done.. (you mention days/weeks) that would take the pressure off me ;) When you can give me/us a link, that would be great :D

PS: the stats-update is automatic or manually? The credit system is comparable to the current team-system (like the previous Gauntlet)?

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

More news on the 'donation challenge' part:

We are now at $ 373 (and my donation of $49 isn't even in there yet :D) We should be able to hit $500 easily if this keeps up!

(We should do this more often :p)

PS: 'wierd' amounts due to € => $ conversion

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

Hi Eesger,
It looks like we're thinking along the same lines. You can follow the development of the Gauntlet software at the end of this thread
http://www.paddysinspace.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=455&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=60
on the PADDY'SINSPACE forum. Please feel free to join in the discussion - there's still time to incorporate new ideas you may have. It works the same way as the previous Gauntlet. The only manual intervention required is to start it at the beginning of the competition, and stop it at the end.

As far as I can see you are at the stage of getting and organizing the data, have you built graphics and tables?

Ehm, you are not using the standard export files at?:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/stats/

(questions, questions ;) )

In other news today;)
Due to an (over?;)active treasurer the status of the donation challenge has been updated again: $ 653 (!!!!!)

[edit]
Ow, and welcome to this forum also! ;)
[/edit]

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

The data capture is complete. It uses the RPC show_user.php?userid=XXXXXX&format=xml
Only the main Gauntlet graph (the one in the above thread) is complete so far. I hope to have the graphs showing the users in each team done by the end of today. The tables should be complete next week.

I don't know how many crunchers will attend the Gauntlet, but the more crunchers attend, the bigger the problem... you are retrieving the data per cruncher. To get the best result you would need a "snapshot".

This could be done by getting the various 'show_user.php?userid=XXXXXX&format=xml' as fast as you can get them to mimic a snapshot. But doing so will be a small DoS-like action on the Berkeley servers! (the more crunchers, the higher the load). And trust me, they don't like that!!

To alleviate the stress on the Berkeley-servers you could implement a timer between each get-request. But this would not be good for the Gauntlet-stats (i.e. the last cruncher may have an hour extra crunchtime compared the the first).

The best way to go is to use the generated stats exports...

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

Point taken, but he last users would not have an extra hour of crunch time as their start time would be delayed by the same amount - their crunch window would just be shifted in time. Thanks for the tip, Eesger - I'll check out the stats exports.

Update: The Seti@Netherlands Fund Raising Rally status: $ 653,--

see:
http://www.seti.nl "fund raising for Seti@Home" topic

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Hey Fred,

Your post is indeed great news, so good that I had posted that already ;)

@Bruno,
Ah, offcource, both measuring points shift in time.. also point taken ;)

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

Eesger,
Bruno suggested on our board that it might be good to have both people doing stats, its good in case one set of stats fail. We learned a valuable lesson last time with stats problems, its good to have 2 people doing them.

Bruno's script is using rpc's and working off a test xml user list i made. I invented a fictitious competition with 3 teams and about 30 users, but the users on the teams are real!. So the stats Bruno is producing at the moment are real stats for real users, they just don't know they are in this temporary team...LOL . But this is identical to a real gauntlet, just like last time, we are adding the users by hand. This could be automated in time with a small script for joining the competition, i can write this php script.

The test xml file is the same kind of list of users as the last gauntlet. Users would only be on the list if they posted a message to say they want to be in the competition with their user id and user name, in their own team forum with their own gauntlet message.

Eesger would you like to try use a similar xml file as a method of getting the list of users and teams entered in the competition? If we are both working off the same list, with the same format, then this makes administration of the stats and competition easier.

Fictitious test competition file; http://www.boincteams.com/testpages/gauntlet2009/sample-gauntlet-102.xml

{NOTE} The users in the fictious competition are on teams, but the team they are on might not be their real team. But this is exactly the way we need it for the gauntlet. Anyone can join any team.

John.

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Johnney/Bruno,

I agree, I think that is a good idea.

I'll have to build a script that is able to read (and process) the XML-file, should be no problem. And indeed, that way both stats have 100% sure the same teams & members. You/Bruno are hereby responsible for the XML containing the teams & members for the Gauntlet 2009! ;) (ok?)

We already have a system reading and processing the "standard Berkeley Exports". I will be using that data for the Gauntlet also. As I understand you guys are planing to use the per users xml files. That way there will be a (slight?) discrepancy in the presented stats. In my opinion, for the mentioned reasons, the best thing would be for you guys to use the same export also. But ultimately it is offcourse your choice (but please, please have a delay of several seconds between each XML-request to prevent a DoS-like event..)

I asume you will be updating the stats once a day around midnight (UTC)? (that way it will be comparable with the Berkeley exports..)

In other news :p (that's what you get when you have a thread with two items ;)
The donation challenge is at $ 671 (The only way is up, baby :D)

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

You/Bruno are hereby responsible for the XML containing the teams & members for the Gauntlet 2009! ;) (ok?)

I can log the teams, user ID's and user names for this competition if you want. Anyone can maintain the list really, if your going to run this competition, you could write out the list using the same xml format yourself and anyone could use the list to produce stats, including any of the regular stats sites if they choose to get involved.

Its up to Bruno what method he chooses to get the info, i'm gently encouraging him to use the full export. But that is a big undertaking just to get those stats and read them. If he wants to use the rpc, it might be better than no stats and no competition.

John

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Do you have any idea how many people entered the last Gauntlet?

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

Last year, About 350....ballpark figure.

We are trying to gear the script to handle between 50 and 5,000 users.

John.

The donation challenge is now at $ 788

We should be able to get it into four figures when this keeps up :D

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS

Great Job on the donations!

I'd challenge you to NOT include ANY zeros in your donation amount.
And not duplicate any numbers!

i.e. instead of $130.xx donate $134.56
i.e. instead of $35.00 donate $35.67

The small dollars and cents don't mean that much to the individual, but they sure will add up for SETI@home!

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SETI@home since 1999
"Set it, and Forget it!"

The Gauntlet-stats are taking form!

When I've done things right the subteam-credit and RAC field will fill with the next Berkeley-update. Then I need to fill the history data and.. well.. then I'm almost there :D

@Johnney
Have you guys got a link for your stats?

@Heflin
It's a nice idea, but I like bigger figures better ;)

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The SETI@Home Gauntlet 2012 april 16 - 30| info / chat | STATS